Welcome back: A TBI recovery story from Provider to Patient

By Mandi Dickey

After 24 years in healthcare, one fateful evening transformed Mandi from practitioner to patient. A motor vehicle accident left her with a signifiant traumatic brain injury that has taken her much longer than expected to recover from. Follow along as she shares her journey back from her worst day through the first year.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brain Wellness Solutions
• Release date: May 30, 2024
• ISBN: 9798990861213

Mandi Dickey

Mandi Dickey is a Board-Certified Nurse Practitioner with 20+ years of experience in healthcare. She is a three-time Top Nurse Practitioner award winner, received the Faculty Excellence award in her previous role of nursing professor, has been on the review committee for several nursing textbooks, and was the recipient of the Women of Armor Personal Growth award for 2023. In 2022, Mandi began her own podcast called Brain Wellness - the Podcast, covering a multitude of topics related to brain health and wellness, and has been interviewed on multiple other podcasts, discussing migraine and stroke treatment and concussion prevention. In 2023, Mandi was in a car accident and suffered a traumatic brain injury, and while not fully recovered, has returned to her passion of sharing and educating the public about neuroscience topics, now most passionately about concussion and TBI.

Book preview

Welcome back

A TBI recovery story from Provider to Patient

Mandi Dickey, FNP-BC, MSN, RN

Brain Wellness Solutions

Copyright © 2024 Brain Wellness Solutions

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

ISBN: 979-8-9908612-1-3

Printed in the United States of America

Acknowledgement

This book would not have been possible without the encouragement and help from my husband, Don, my biological and nonbiological children, my friends Krissy,  Amanda, and Elise, and my entire treatment team that helped me get to where I am now.

Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

1  In the blink of headlights

2  Whispers of trauma

3  All hands on deck

4  Fractured sight

5  The maze of forgetfulness

6  The fatigue factor

7  The appointment marathon

8  The journey back to work

9  Weathering the headache storm

10  Circuit malfunction

11  The battlefield within

12  Struggling aftermath

13  The voyage to ‘I do’

14  Lost in resourcelessness

15  The ripple effect

16  Finding God in the journey

17  The breakthrough

18  A shift in perspective

19  Surfacing symptoms

20  The rollercoaster

21  From voice to paper

About The Author

Introduction

After nearly 6 months of struggles, we rode in the car and I talked my child’s ear off. He finally chuckled, smirked, looked at me and said, Welcome back. But let’s back up a bit to find out what I had to come back from…

I was always a go-getter, working multiple jobs, raising kids while going to school to further my degrees. I initially went to college thinking I wanted to be a music major, but it clearly wasn’t meant to be as I kept running into snags in my education plan. I took a break from college, found a local course to become a nursing assistant and fell in love with healthcare. I decided nursing was my new passion, and all the doors started opening up for me. 

I began by getting my associate degree in nursing, went straight into my bachelor’s degree while working as a nurse, then straight to graduate school for my master’s degree in nursing. I used my master’s degree to work in management for a while, then switched to teaching the future of nursing as faculty in a nursing program. After a few years of teaching, I realized I really missed having my own patients and wanted to be back at the bedside fulltime, so I went back to school for my nurse practitioner certificate (this was a post-master’s certificate, accelerated program - yay!). 

Essentially all of my healthcare experience was in neurosciences to some aspect. I spent a few months on a general medical/surgical floor before transferring to the neurology floor as a nursing assistant while in nursing school. I stayed there as a nurse after graduating with my associate degree, then spent time in the ICU for a while (always including neuro patients) as both a floor nurse and in management before moving on to teaching. Even as a professor, I had the privilege of creating a 1-credit elective course for neuroscience-inclined students. 

When I went back to school for my nurse practitioner (NP) certificate, I knew exactly what my goal was - to work as a neuro NP. And that is exactly where I landed. I spent 11 years in neurology before looking to expand my knowledge into the other areas of neuroscience and ultimately, I took a new job in a surgical group where I would care for brain and spine patients. 

​Not gonna lie, my life was getting pretty much perfect at this point. As I went through all these magnificent years in neuro, some not-so-magnificent things were happening in the rest of my life. I had two tough marriages with difficult divorces and three kids between the two marriages - the youngest had just been diagnosed with autism the year prior after years and years of struggling with behavior issues and various therapy attempts without success. I had finally found my perfect life partner and had just gotten engaged, the kids were doing great in school (including my youngest who was FINALLY excited to go to school and was doing phenomenal off all of his medications), and I had just switched to this exciting new job.

​Then the unthinkable happened…we were in a car accident…and I felt like I had been hit by a bus, but it was an SUV. And that’s where this story really begins…

1 

In the blink of headlights

I remember the day like it was yesterday, but the days between get pretty fuzzy. I was at my highest high - I was in orientation for my new job and thought the day was going to be spent in the clinic as was listed on my schedule, but the doctor that I was shadowing had surgery on his schedule for the afternoon, and I got to tag along. I was only a month into my job, and I couldn’t touch anything because I was still just ‘shadowing’ (learning without the hands-on aspect, literally). 

The surgery staff got me gowned up and tied the arms of the gown behind my back, ‘mummy style’ as they said, so I wouldn’t accidentally touch anything. I got to stand right next to the surgeon, however, and watch the entire procedure! I got his permission to ask questions as he went along, because I wanted to soak up every aspect of the experience. I got to be in the OR for a brain surgery, something I had wanted to see since I got into healthcare 24 years ago. 

When I got home, I talked my new fiancé’s ear off about the surgery - I was still on cloud nine from the experience. His birthday was a few days away and his birthday present had arrived early (a new tool to work on our compound bows). He was excitedly playing with the tool, seeing how it worked, while he chuckled at me as I talked nonstop. I waited for him to get done playing with his new birthday present so we could go to dinner, but it was getting late, so I reminded him one last time we should get going before the restaurant closed. He reluctantly left his new tool, and we hopped in our vehicle.

I kept talking the whole ride, which normally lasts about 10 minutes - I was just so excited about the surgery! We were at the last intersection before the restaurant, and I could see the restaurant on the corner. The light turned green, or so we thought - we would later learn through traffic camera footage that only the straight light turned green - our turn light was still red. There was one car coming from the other direction on the highway; they had their headlights on, and you can see for half a mile at least on this stretch of the road, however they made no attempt to stop or swerve or slow down as we were going through the intersection. 

There was no honking of the horn, no squealing of the tires; they just crashed into our car at full speed, slicing off the front end right in front of the wheel on my side of the vehicle. As I later learned, after hitting us, they continued moving through the intersection and stopped against the traffic light post - they were moving at some impressive speed. 

The last thing I got out was Babe! as I saw the headlights coming at our car. Then everything was like slow motion but fast at the same time. When Don (my fiancé) realized the other car was not stopping, he quickly did what he could to try to minimize the impact from the accident - he turned the wheel as far as he could to try to match the angle of the other car so it wasn’t a direct hit to the side of our vehicle. I felt the crash of the vehicle (a midsize SUV) hitting us and the shifting of our large SUV. 

Amid everything else moving so fast, this is the moment that time slowed down for me. It felt like one of those slow-motion moments in a movie, as I could feel my head violently bouncing to the left and to the right until our vehicle came to a stop. The airbags throughout the vehicle deployed, sending fluff and dust into the air - it became difficult to see inside the vehicle. 

My phone and wallet had been tucked between my knees as we drove (so I could talk with my hands as I always do), and they were thrown to the floor by the impact. Once everything stopped moving, I heard Don ask Babe, are you ok? and I realized I was hyperventilating, repeating Oh my God, oh my God. I couldn’t get out any other words in my panic.

After a few moments, Don pushed his door open and fought through the airbags to get out. He came around my side of the car and forced the door open to check on me. As my phone was thrown to the floor, apparently it engaged the emergency feature and 911 was automatically dialed. Don was able to reach my phone for me as we were connected with a dispatcher. 

My left knee swelled up instantly and I started to feel pain. I noted scratches down my right shoulder and arm that were bleeding - we would later identify that these scratches were from the airbags and suspected that my knee was impacted by my phone and wallet that had been tucked there. Don went to check on the other driver and came back right away once he could tell the driver was ok - he was already out of his vehicle and walking around. It seemed, at the moment, that the only one injured was me. 

When officers got there, they checked on us and asked a few brief questions. The ambulance crew came over with a stretcher and had me pivot from the car to the stretcher. My knee was swollen and painful, so no one wanted to take any chances of having me walk on my own. Then they wheeled me around the front of the vehicle and into the back of the ambulance. This was the moment of truth for me - I started feeling panicky when I saw that the front of our vehicle was completely missing from just in front of the tire. Headlights were hanging by their cords, I could barely see into the vehicle because of all the airbags obstructing the view. Don was talking with the police as I rolled by him. 

I couldn’t feel all of my pains yet, but my coping mechanism has always been humor, so I tried joking with the paramedics. I got an IV placed but told them I didn’t need anything for pain yet (adrenaline was still blocking the pain at this point). They put a neck brace on me just in case there was cervical spine injury as I was just starting to feel some discomfort in my neck, and we